Boiling Point Issue 19

state-of-the-art spaces with Zip instant boiling water

Instant Boiling Water

Issue 19 – 2012

NEWS FROM ZIP MOVING AHEAD AROUND THE WORLD Business may not be buoyant in some quarters but Zip is getting on with the job of marketing innovative, Australian-made instant boiling water systems and other filtered water products in close to seventy countries. This year Zip is not only expanding its export markets but is also introducing two important innovations: Zip HydroTap models can now provide sparkling chilled filtered water as well as boiling and chilled filtered water. Secondly, Zip is also introducing a new standard in water filtration, which removes impurities as tiny as 1/5000 of a millimetre.

A rewarding Venice Biennale It has been a rewarding experience collaborating with the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) as a sponsor of the highly innovative Australia pavilion at the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennale. You will find an article on the pavilion in this issue of Boiling Point, and Zip owes its thanks to the AIA for the sponsorship opportunity. We’re always proud to help promote Australia abroad.

Enjoying the Sydney Festival For the third year in a row, Zip Industries will be Principal Sponsor of Sydney Festival 2013.

The Festival is expected to attract an audience of well over a million visitors to theatrical, art and musical events in and around Sydney between January 5 and January 26. It is exciting to be able to contribute to Sydney’s reputation in

that way as Zip has enjoyed the support of the people of Sydney for the past sixty-five years, enabling us to expand around the world.

Many thanks to all our Boiling Point readers.

Your ongoing interest is sincerely appreciated.

Michael Crouch AO Executive Chairman Zip Heaters (Aust) Pty Ltd a member of the Zip Industries Group michaelcrouch@zipindustries.com

02 VeNICE BIENNALE

04 bankable quality

This year, Australia takes a new approach to the renowned festival. We get an insight from Creative Directors, architects Gerard Reinmuth and Anthony Burke.

It’s one of the biggest Australian commercial projects to happen in Sydney in the past 12 months, with over 6,000 employees now calling Commonwealth Bank Place home.

10 GOVERNMENT services 12 G RAY PUKSAND studio OFFICES, dandenong Taking advantage of natural light, the An interior full of light and warmth by HASSELL presents new possibilities for government offices everywhere.

Cover image: Government Services Offices, Dandenong Photography: Peter Bennetts

Sydney studio was designed to encourage creativite collaboration among this awardwinning team.

08 STUDIO BECKER European-designed, ultra high-end kitchens have landed in Australia with Studio Becker’s state-of-the-art Sydney showroom, complete with Zip HydroTap.

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Team spirit Anthony Burke (left) & Gerard Reinmuth (right), Creative Directors of the Australian pavilion

The world stage Zip Industries exports to more than 60 countries and sponsors the Australian pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, at which 55 countries take part.

The prestigious and influential event has taken place since 1975 and attracts a high degree of international attention, making it an ideal place for Australia to show off its talents. At the 2010 Biennale, 90,000 people visited the Australian exhibition, which later toured to eight countries, taking in a total of 200,000 visitors.

“The Biennale is considered the Olympics of architecture and gives Australians the opportunity to address current issues in a speculative way rather than being limited to

promoting examples of built work,” says David Parken, CEO of the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA).

As the AIA is the lead organisation representing Australian architects nationally and internationally, it strongly believes this country must be represented at the Biennale and it has extended its support of the Australian Exhibition until 2016.

“It’s an opportunity for Australian architecture, ideas and creativity to engage with the international media and grow Australia’s reputation as a cultured and creative society that has something to say on matters of public importance.”

Zip Industries is one of the sponsors of the Australia pavilion at the 2012 Venice International Architecture Biennale. According to the pavilion’s creative directors, Anthony Burke and Gerard Reinmuth, collaboration is the name of the game.

At the Biennale this year, creative directors Anthony Burke and Gerard Reinmuth decided to confront traditional perceptions. Under the theme Formations, they highlighted the way architects have become more collaborative than ever (they even enlisted Sydney studio Toko Concept Design to be an integral part of their creative team). They gathered together an Australian contingent of six groups, each of which exhibited a different way of collaborating.

First, there was Healthabitat, a UN awardwinning team that has improved the health of Australian indigenous people by using good design to upgrade their homes. A 10-year study of the team’s work has shown a 40 per cent reduction in illnesses associated with a poor living environment. The team, led by architect Paul Pholeros, has even implemented its ‘Housing for Health’ principles in places as far apart as Nepal and Brooklyn, New York, and in Venice Pholeros worked on homes of local people to show how $7,000 worth of improvements could dramatically improve living conditions.

Other exhibitors also took the Australian exhibition beyond the pavilion’s walls. Architects Supermanoeuvre designed a metal birdcagetype structure around a staircase leading up to the light monitor at the top of the pavilion.

“Visitors could look out across the canal and to the pavilions around them,” explains Burke, head of the Architecture School at University of Technology Sydney. “Everything was designed to project visitors out into Venice and into the conversations we really wanted to have with other international exhibitors.”

Fellow exhibitor Archrival took part in that conversation in a very active way. The non-profit

organisation, which creates small-scale, highvolume projects, filled the courtyard between the Australian, French, Czech and Uruguayan pavilions, with foosball (table soccer) games taking place in a way that bonded them all.

Meanwhile, Melbourne’s RRR radio show The Architects went out and about with microphones, recording interviews and shows in the Biennale grounds. “There was this strong sense of us reaching out,” says Burke. “We really grabbed eyes in many different and unexpected ways.”

Particularly unexpected were the activities of sculptor and architect Richard Goodwin, who toured the canals of Venice by boat, mapping the city on video before returning to the Giardini, climbing a pole and sliding back into the light monitor at the top of the pavilion on a huge flying fox. “In a way, the Australian pavilion was everywhere,” says Reinmuth, a founding director of Sydney architectural practice Terroir.

It wasn’t even just Australian. Tom Kovac (a professor of architecture at Melbourne’s RMIT) and PhD student Fleur Watson showed off their ideas for Maribor in Slovenia, this year’s European City of Culture. They presented their exhibition 2112 Ai (100YR City) in both the Australian and Slovenian pavilions, reflecting on how the city of Maribor could be transformed over the next 100 years, and demonstrating how collaboration was essential for innovation.

“Our aim was to focus on Australia doing things out in the world,” Reinmuth shares. “In a way, it’s like the Zip HydroTap. It’s not just an Australian product; it’s an incredibly good product internationally.”

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Image ‘The Clouds of Venice’ for the Australian pavilion at the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale by Supermanoeuvre. The Clouds of Venice creates a diffuse spatial condition through an ultra-high population assembly of steel rods.

Each element undergoes a unique sequence of bending operations performed by an industrial robot controlled via custom software written by Supermanoeuvre.

The form is a result of the explicit negotiation between material properties, tectonic constraints and experiential desires.

Supermanoeuvre is an architecture and innovation company that works across a wide range of media and scales from residential projects to transport infrastructure; from robotic fabrication to research white papers; and from structural form-finding software to interactive urban models.

Project Team Iain Maxwell Dave Pigram Wes McGee Ben Hagenhofer Lauren Vasey Whit Self supermanoeuvre.com

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Commonwealth Bank Place Words: Guy Allenby Photography: Tyrone Branigan Architect: Richard Francis-Jones Interior Designer: Davenport Campbell

Bankable quality Darling Harbour’s new Commonwealth Bank Place had to accommodate 6,000 office workers plus provide an appropriate link between the corporate building and one of Sydney’s favourite public spaces.

Sydney has long had a love/hate relationship with Darling Harbour. The love is evidenced by the extraordinary numbers of people who enjoy the space every year – 28 million. On the other hand, a key gripe has been that the public precinct has never quite linked with the city in quite the way it should have. And that’s particularly true of this corner of the park.

In other words, the key challenge was to meet the central brief of accommodating 6,000 Commonwealth Bank employees, but being nestled as it is next to the leafy heart of Sydney’s Darling Harbour, it was also going to be a place that drew a great deal of attention to itself, plus offered an opportunity to revitalise and define this corner of one of the harbour city’s

most important public spaces. But more than “defining the park”, the intention of the building was to also “create strong connections back into the city whilst moving backwards and forwards into Darling Harbour South”, explains architect Richard Francis-Jones.

As such, the two buildings present a glass and aluminium corporate face on the city side, but on the side that faces the public domain – and the children’s playground beyond – a low-scaled timber awning brings a softer element to the design of the area.

Indeed it’s the provision of the new playground that includes a new water-play area that represents one part of the new project that the general public can enjoy. Here children can create pools, dams and divert water flows.

There’s also a children’s theatre (with Monkey Bar Children’s Theatre Productions being the resident licensee) and a low resolution digital façade on the western face of the building that people can manipulate using LED technology.

The building also offers a “community green” where workers in the building can relax at lunchtime. The Commonwealth Bank was keen to create a campus-style workplace where workers could collaborate during the working day in a comfortable, engaging interior.

“We put a great deal of care into the details of the atriums, the stainless steel, timber and

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“ the Zip HydroTap is able to churn out the amount of water demanded without people having to line up�

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glass, using natural timber for the handrails,” says Francis-Jones. “The execution lends a very warm sense to the interior and naturally organises the building from its more interactive and more energised kitchen areas around the atrium to quiet spaces towards the exterior.”

The kitchen areas are an integral part of a campus style office, adds senior designer Oscar Iturra of Davenport Campbell, who were charged with the task of fitting out the interiors.

The offices have a large floor plate, says Iturra, so both large and small “tea points” are scattered throughout the office. The larger tea points each feature two Zip HydroTap systems to cope with the demand.

“At the bigger tea points the Zip HydroTap is able to churn out the amount of boiling and chilled filtered water demanded without people having to line up,” he says. Indeed the

efficiencies the units offer are two-fold: instant drinks for large numbers of thirsty office workers and superior energy savings, which represented another crucial element in the total job.

“We achieved a six green star rating which was an important threshold for everybody involved to meet,” adds Francis-Jones.

“We wanted to find ways to enhance people’s wellbeing, not just tick boxes. A great deal was achieved by the way natural daylight was introduced, through fresh air systems … you can walk through spaces, open windows, hear children playing outside … the building responds to its occupants, to their needs and choices, in healthy and stimulating ways.”

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Studio Becker showroom, Sydney Words: Nigel Bartlett Photography: Paul Gosney Architect: Dale Jones-Evans

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A perfect fit

Fiona Lochtenberg at home. Words: Nigel Bartlett. Photography: Simone Rosenbauer. Architect: Dale Jones-Evans

Studio Becker offers bespoke kitchens and joinery with enviable quality and design. When Fiona Lochtenberg came across the brand, she had to bring it home to Australia.

FIONA’S FAVOURITE device Each of Fiona’s eight kitchen displays in the Sydney showroom features a Zip HydroTap, because she fell in love with the appliance while designing two homes for herself. “I wouldn’t have a kitchen without one,” she says. “I have two in my main home, and two in my holiday home. I like anything that’s well designed and makes sense. When I was I searching desperately for something similar for the house I was designing in the US – the taps over there were so ugly and didn’t have the correct boiling point like the Zip HydroTap does – I had two delivered from Australia .” Fiona’s admiration made it a natural choice for her showroom. “Architects go up and touch the Zip HydroTap whenever they see it here. They can’t avoid it,” she says. “They look at it and think, ‘That’s a good idea’.”

Entering Studio Becker’s Sydney showroom is like walking into an Aladdin’s cave for architects and interior designers. Externally it gives away little, but inside, its wares make designers of prestige homes salivate with desire.

This by-appointment-only space is home to bespoke kitchens and joinery produced with high attention to detail. Made in Germany, each item fits the specifications perfectly, with a firstclass quality of build, an unparalleled range of finishes and accessories, and innovations that are at the forefront of technology.

The showroom opened in August 2011, after interior designer Fiona Lochtenberg stumbled across Studio Becker in the US while working on a house there. “I made an appointment at the San Francisco showroom and it immediately blew me away,” she recalls.

Then came the decision to install a Studio Becker kitchen in her own home, in Sydney’s Mosman. “The kitchens in the US and in Sydney each arrived exactly how I designed them, down to a fraction of a millimetre.”

That was when she decided to bring the brand to Australia, opening in a converted warehouse redesigned by award-winning architect Dale Jones-Evans. Since then, she and her team have introduced Studio Becker to architects, designers and developers, inviting them to the stunning showroom.

A ground-floor ‘Black Box’ (a huge kitchen theatre) includes the dazzling Yin & Yang kitchen, comprising a teardrop-shaped island bench in white opposite an array of black

cabinets curving around them, just like the ancient Chinese symbol. “The idea came to me in Perisher Valley, where my daughter was competing in a snowboarding race,” Fiona explains. “I was visualising the course and the curves inspired me. I got out of bed at 3:20am and what I drew then is what you see today.”

Another kitchen, designed in the most seductive green imaginable (“I love green,” says Fiona, “it signifies new beginnings”), showcases the very desirable concealed elevation system.

At the press of a remote-control button, two panels rise from the centre of a pair of kitchen islands, extending their entire lengths. The panels are home to a toaster and food mixers, all plugged in and ready to be used. It’s just how a domesticated James Bond would live.

The same system is seen in a luxurious dressing-room display on the showroom’s first floor. This dark-veneer unit is wider and double-sided, one portion housing a man’s accoutrements, including his cufflinks, pens, rings and watch collection. The options on the woman’s side include an illuminated make-up mirror, delineated storage for all her jewellery and accessories and a mini fridge for skin creams and potions. That element of exclusivity, she adds, is what makes Studio Becker different to its competitors. “We measure to perfection, and we can customise everything,” says Fiona.

“It’s what sets us apart from everybody else.”

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Government Services Offices, Dandenong Words: Nigel Bartlett Photography: Peter Bennetts Architect: HASSELL

Under one roof Victoria’s new Government Services Offices in Dandenong unite staff from four departments in one highly desirable and sustainable workplace, achieving a six star rating from the GBCA.

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When the Victorian state government decided to gather together a number of different departments on one site, the project called for fresh thinking in workplace design. International architecture practice HASSELL came up with a building that is quite different to public-sector offices of old.

The Government Services Offices (GSO) building in Dandenong, 24 km from Melbourne CBD, is not only home to four separate departments, it also unites staff from different geographic locations.

For this reason, and because it attracts many visitors and clients, it was essential that the eightstorey building be as people-friendly as possible.

Lead architect Robin Deutschmann, a senior associate with HASSELL, explains that this involved making maximum use of natural daylight and views and softening the workplace with a high degree of greenery. In addition, the architects paid a lot of attention to the GSO’s communal and break-out spaces.

The use of timber also creates warmth and, combined with the greenery, a tranquil setting that enhances the people-focussed feel of the building, while banquette seating forms inviting locations for groups to gather together.

“What we ultimately tried to do through the design solution is to treat everyone with respect and make the experience as positive as possible for all users of the building,” says Deutschmann.

Six of the building’s eight storeys are open-plan workspaces. Atriums connect departments vertically and, with their adjacent meeting rooms and hubs, foster collaboration between staff from different departments and also create “places of respite that offer great daylight, views and amenity”, says Deutschmann.

Key to this are the building’s kitchens, which are incorporated into the atriums and breakout areas. “The social kitchen spaces and breakouts are open, relaxing, collaborative areas, overlooking and within the double-height atriums,” says Trevor Coolledge, an associate with HASSELL. Each of the 15 kitchens has been fitted with a Zip HydroTap system, as have various access rooms, activity rooms, conference rooms and a wellness centre. In total, the building is home to 24 Zip HydroTap four-in-one units and six Zip Chilltap chilled water systems. Coolledge says that the Zip HydroTap systems were the ideal choice thanks to their cost, zero level of water wastage, low energy consumption and long operational life. “The Zip HydroTap systems make it easier and more inviting for staff to drink fresh, filtered water and enable them to quickly prepare hot drinks,” he adds. “They also reduce the need for staff to buy bottled water, saving money and the environment.”

The 27,000-square-metre project has gained six stars from the Green Building Council of Australia, thanks to design features including: maximum sunlight penetration on the southern side; self-shading from the cantilevered upper levels, underfloor air distribution, solar-heated water, waterless urinals and provision for bicycles with change rooms and lockers.

All this adds up to create a building, far removed from the traditional workplace, which provides staff with offices that are fresh, appealing and uplifting.

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Let there be light The Sydney offices of Gray Puksand architects combine a heritage-listed building with fresh ideas to create a space that’s airy, functional and sophisticated.

Words: Nigel Bartlett Photography: Tyrone Branigan Architect and Interior Designer: Gray Puksand

Gray Puksand is an architectural practice that creates beautiful workplaces for other people. So, when the company’s Sydney office were designing their new premises, they knew the principles they wanted to apply. At the same time, they wanted to try out new ideas that they could then show their clients. Seven months after moving in, they’re delighted with the results.

“Moving from our old office gave us the chance to experiment,” says partner Scott Moylan. “We talk to clients about different ways of working and here we can show them what we’re talking about.”

The practice demoted the role of its boardroom and moved it to the back of the premises. In the new workplace, nearly all meetings take place in the two ‘collaborative zones’ at the front of the office.

The walls here are covered with pinboards for plans, drawings and photographs, with one wall covered with whiteboard paint for note-taking or to act as a projection screen.

Moylan explains, “Items on the pinboards stay up for as long as we want, which means everyone can see them and it makes things a lot more collaborative.”

In addition, the practice reduced the size of its workstations, so all staff now work at more slimline desks. Instead, they move around the office more, using the meeting areas to spread out their plans and mix with each other in the light,

airy space. It features four-metrehigh ceilings and enormous hinged windows that open onto the treelined street.

“People walk in, go straight to the windows and say, ‘Isn’t the light wonderful?’” says Moylan.

“The natural light was what really attracted us to this space.”

A further bonus was the fact that the office is on the first floor. “We liked the idea of walking up the stairs,” Moylan explains. “We like the street noise, too – it gives a sense of being part of the urban environment.”

Despite being in a heritage-listed building that dates back to 1897, the office has a highly contemporary, sophisticated feel, thanks to its palette and furnishings. The original timber flooring is complemented by a white painted interior; the two long, white meeting tables are accompanied by white chairs around one and pale-green caféstyle chairs around the other; black pendant lights hang from the ceiling.

“Our clients say this is the sort of place they expect us to be in,” says Moylan, who describes the practice’s former workplace as a standard commercial office. “The move gave us a fresh start and a sense of renewal. It’s a wonderful space; we’re really lucky to have it.”

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SCOTT MOYLAN

A partner with Gray Puksand, Scott believes café areas are the heart of of the modern workplace.

One of the Gray Puksand Sydney office’s ‘collaborative zones’ doubles as a café area, where staff eat meals and enjoy coffee breaks. “We tell clients to think of this area as a space where people can meet,” says Moylan. This means that high-quality fixtures and fittings are essential. So, alongside the reconstituted stone surfaces and high-quality fittings is, of course, the Zip HydroTap. “I’d say we put Zip into 90 per cent of

our projects,” says Moylan. “We pride ourselves on having ongoing relationships with our clients, so it’s important to us to specify a product that not only does its job, but is going to do that job for a long time.

You can have the most wonderful workspace, but if the boiling water tap doesn’t work well, that’s what people complain about. We’ve specified Zip for long enough to know that it works.”

“ We’ve specified Zip for long enough to know that it works.”

Zip Hydroboil

Zip HydroTap

Australia Zip Heaters (Aust) Pty Ltd 1800 424 344 zipindustries.com

New Zealand Zenith Heaters 0800 558 055 zenithheaters.co.nz

United Kingdom Zip Heaters (UK) Ltd 0845 602 4533 zipindustries.co.uk

Singapore Multico Building Products +65 6283 8888 multico.com.sg

Also in: Europe (Germany), Africa, Asia Pacific – Philippines, Thailand, Taipei, Taiwan Published by Indesign Group (61 2) 9368 0150, info@indesign.com.au © Zip Industries Publisher: Raj Nandan Operations: Adele Troeger Editorial: Nigel Bartlett, Guy Allenby, Nicky Lobo Production: Shannon Smith Design: Frances Yeoland Zip Industries: Murray Pope, Tom Fisher, Corinne Roberts Zip Industries and the publisher hereby disclaim, to the full extent permitted by law, all liability, damages, costs and expenses whatsoever arising from or in connection with copy information or other material appearing in this publication, any negligence of the publisher, or any person’s actions in reliance thereon. Inclusion of any copy information or other material must not be taken as an endorsement by Zip Industries. Views expressed by contributors are personal views and are not necessarily endorsed by Zip Industries. The terms ‘Zip’, ‘Hydroboil’, ‘HydroTap’, ‘Power-Pulse’, ‘Chilltap’ and ‘Chill Fountain’ are trade marks.

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